When pentesting, do you have standard templates for note taking or do you just do your own thing?

@JohnZhau It's always better to use one of the templates or frameworks available. My favourite at any organisation was one that provided the output in word format for executive summary and general info, and xml so it could be automagically incorporated into clients' tracking frameworks

Templates reduce effort

I'm using Linux with pandoc+markdown for reports. I hate having to use Word just for reporting...

I haven't used (desktop) Word in almost a decade I guess. If I really need anything related to MS Office, (basic) Office is available online for free if you have a free MS account. So basically a basic Office online is available for free. For anything else, there's always Libre Office + PDFs

IMO the default format for documents is PDF, whenever you want to make sure they look the same everywhere (Linux, MS, Mac). Word is not really a portable format.

every time I see someone using Word for technical documentation, I downgrade the person a few notches.. Word is not for that... I personally use Joplin (a markdown editor)... it have sync, encryption, real-time preview, export pdf, there's linux, windows, mac, android, ios versions...